Redeye (30 page)

“I didn't think Mormons smoked,” I said.

“I feel pretty bad.”

“Why did your daddy want to do all that?”

“I don't know. He thought he was doing right.”

I looked into the fire. “Do you believe all that stuff he believes?”

“Yeah.”

His smoke was smoking up his eyes. I took it out of his mouth and held it.

“Don't you believe what
your
daddy believes?” he asked me.

“I don't know where he is.”

We sat there for a minute. Then I said, “A one-armed Mexican taught Zack to roll a smoke. And he taught me. I can teach you sometime.”

He didn't say nothing.

“Did you ever hear about the Mountain Meadows Massacre?” I said.

“Yeah, I heard about it. Why?” He looked at me.

“If the Mormons really done it, and you'd been there, you think you would of helped them?”

“The Mormons didn't do it. The Indians did. Or if we did we had a reason.”

I put his smoke back in his mouth.

“But sure I would of,” he said. “You would too. If your father told you to.”

Matter of fact, now that I think about it, P.J., it couldn't have gone any goddamned better than if I'd planned every minute of it. What might look like a problem to you is in fact a Golden Opportunity. You ain't seen nothing yet. We got a man killed up there—a man from Denver—killed by a group of Indians and a Madman Mormon and once I get that advertised and we get the Indians settled back down, and get Geronimo or Buffalo Bill, or hell, both of them, in some kind of show up there in Eagle City—dress it all up—why hell, we'll be sucking them in from the East like flies to dead meat. And from the West, too. Hell, from all over the world. Foreigners love the idea of a Wild West.”

. . . and that's the story of the Eagle City Shootout of '92. As it turned out, neither Cobb Pittman nor Markham Thorpe emerged the next day from the mighty Mesa Largo. Stories will be written for ages to come about what happened in the mesa that last night after the last spring snow of April 1892. Although Thorpe was eventually found in a shallow grave, disfigured, Pittman and the mysterious canine Redeye were never found. Some say they still roam Mesa Largo in the dark night. So watch for a tiny red glow in the dark, and if it starts after you, you'd better climb a tree . . .

And we see that in the end, careless passion and wrong were caught in the jaws of defeat, right prevailed; the shortsighted and greedy failed, and those with foresight and wisdom (Blankenship, &c.) mounted the throne of victory and justice, proving once and for all that decency and fair play will always . . .

                                             

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Star Copeland
returned to North Carolina in 1903 and became an advocate for higher education for women.

Bumpy Copeland (born Clayton Eubanks)
became a rancher and amateur archaeologist and remained in Colorado. He sold a very fine collection of relics, mostly jet frogs, to the Smithsonian in 1906 for four thousand dollars, which he invested in a partnership in Blankenship Enterprises.

Abel Merriwether
lost his ranch to debt, sold his business interests, opened a trading store, and continued excavating ruins in Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico.

Zack Paulson
left Colorado for Texas in 1894, where he served for many years as a ranch hand on the Circle Square Ranch near Austin.